6 Steps to Creating an MCAT Study Plan

If you haven’t already, there will come a time when you ask yourself, “What’s the best way to prepare for the MCAT exam?” One way to prepare is to develop a study plan. But where to start? We have six steps to help you create a study plan that works for you.

To say you are busy may be an understatement. Balancing a full course-load, work obligations, extracurricular activities, friends, and family can be a lot to juggle. It’s no wonder that when it comes time to take the MCAT exam, students want to know the best way to prepare.

It won’t be a surprise to hear that preparing for the MCAT exam takes time and dedication. In fact, based on those students who responded to the 2016 MCAT Post-Questionnaire (PMQ), on average, examinees prepared for 20 hours per week for about three months. However, there isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” approach to preparing for the exam. What works for you might not work well for someone else.

So where to start? The first step is to create a study plan.

A study plan is a great tool to help you organize, identify areas of focus, and stay on track. To get you started, the AAMC has developed a free guide that gives you the framework to develop your own plan using free and low-cost resources. These steps include:

Finding out everything you can about the exam

Figuring out where you stand: How much do you know?

Using free and low-cost resources to help you prepare

Creating your study plan

Studying and practicing

Committing to a final rehearsal or practice

Each step includes checklists, suggested resources, and advice to help you craft a plan that will help you succeed on test day. This guide also includes sample worksheets that you can adopt or modify as you develop your own schedule.

As you work through this guide, you might start thinking, “this is a lot of planning” But just like training for a big game or working on a school project, you rarely dive in head first without any preparation. Similarly, a solid study plan requires some work up front. Taking the time will give you a clear roadmap that will help you discover strengths, weaknesses, and concerns, as well as identify strategies and resources to use at every stage of your preparation.

There is no doubt that at some point you’ll feel anxious or overwhelmed as you are preparing for the exam. So, remember, the MCAT exam is just one milestone on your path to medical school and represents just one piece of information that admissions officers use to evaluate you and your application.

Training in a Residency or Fellowship

The Association of American Medical Colleges is a not-for-profit association dedicated to transforming health care through innovative medical education, cutting-edge patient care, and groundbreaking medical research. Its members are all 152 accredited U.S. and 17 accredited Canadian medical schools; nearly 400 major teaching hospitals and health systems, including 51 Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers; and more than 80 academic societies. Through these institutions and organizations, the AAMC serves the leaders of America’s medical schools and teaching hospitals and their more than 173,000 full-time faculty members, 89,000 medical students, 129,000 resident physicians, and more than 60,000 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in the biomedical sciences.